Thursday, July 28, 2011

So mainly a reflection on the time that I did live there, which was between 2004 and 2007. The place seems to occupy its own alternative universe, one that it shares with Portland. My experience was that there was a lot of immaturity there, things that people did that were on a low level that would be looked down on in the East or in the Midwest....and possibly also in parts of California. It's not a question of being uptight, of "If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution", but just of general attitudes. Anarchists that I knew out East would probably have been a little dismayed at their fellows in the Northwest once they met them in the flesh. However, because we're the great Northwest, where the WTO protests happened and where there are as many natural and organic products as you can find, everything that's done here seems to get a free pass by the rest of the country. No one ever seems to look at the actual substance of what transpires. This is never a good thing. I would invite people, if they can, to actually come and see places in the Northwest in the flesh. But, as we're in the far corner of the country here, that's not so easy.

Seattle avoids a lot of the pitfalls of both Olympia and, to a lesser extent, Portland because it's actual culture is less provincial and isolated. The alternative culture in Seattle would be familiar to folks who experienced alt culture elsewhere in the country. Olympia may feel more like a depressing black hole of nihilism.